


Fall On Your Knees

by coloursflyaway



Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Catholic Guilt, Guilt, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Self Flagellation, as in, flagellation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-30
Updated: 2013-11-30
Packaged: 2018-01-03 02:21:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1064586
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coloursflyaway/pseuds/coloursflyaway
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Aidan wakes up the space next to him is empty, he knows it without looking but turns around anyway, with a beating heart and his eyes blinking away the rests of sleep only to find moonlight illuminating white sheets, and not his lover’s pale skin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fall On Your Knees

**Author's Note:**

> Set (in my mind) sometime between 1750 and 1850, but history has never been my strength.  
> Also Richard is some kind of lesser lord and Aidan his manservant-turned-lover.

When Aidan wakes up the space next to him is empty, he knows it without looking but turns around anyway, with a beating heart and his eyes blinking away the rests of sleep only to find moonlight illuminating white sheets, and not his lover’s pale skin. From the next room, he can hear the sound of a whip coming down on flesh, dead against living skin; sharp, rhythmic cracks which echo through the air, the room, his head.  
Something inside him clenches, coils up until Aidan can’t breathe anymore, too focussed on the small, pained sounds between the smacks of the whip, which remind him so much of the small moans which escape Richard’s lips whenever he is so lost in pleasure he can’t keep them inside anymore.

It’s not the first time, not the second or third, the tenth time either, most likely not even the hundredth time, and the worst thing is that Aidan knows it, has known it for so long, because of the long, white scars running across Richard’s back, over each other, melting together and breaking apart again, a web of guilt woven across the other’s back.  
Every new offence adds new threads he knows Richard won’t be able to escape from, one for a sweet word, two for a touch, three for a kiss.  
How his lover keeps count, he doesn’t know, doesn’t want to know, but it's impossible not to think about it sometimes when Richard is on top of him, his face buried in Aidan’s neck and Aidan’s eyes brimming with unshed tears, because he can feel the dried blood and the crisscross of scars covering the other’s back underneath his palms. He never lets Richard see him cry, but he suspects that the other man knows anyway, because he always has been so good at reading Aidan, even when he’d been nothing but the blushing, rambling fool tying Richard’s cravat and shining his shoes, and because he never, ever asks.

If he was a stronger, better, more worthy man, he would get up and leave, let Richard go and forget him, find a wife who won’t ask about the scars and have children who will never know. But Aidan is neither, just a boy who left a home a hundred miles away in hopes of a better future and still has not stopped hoping that somehow, everything will be alright like in the stories his mother used to tell him when they were sitting in front of the fireplace, her with her needlework and Aidan with brightly shining eyes at her feet.  
So he stays instead of walking out of Richard’s life, because he can’t, won’t, wouldn’t know how to do anything but waking up to a lazy smile and blue eyes.  
It’s selfish, and he knows it, is reminded of it every day when he helps Richard dress and he has to pretend that the shirt he picked has a loose button or is stained somewhere because one of the lashes on the other’s back has not stopped bleeding yet.

 

Maybe it’s that thought, the memory of blood beneath his fingers, slowly turning pristine white into a biting red, which makes Aidan tear his gaze away from the empty space next to him, sit up, finally push himself off the bed. It’s cold, and Aidan has to resist the urge to wrap his thin nightshirt tighter around himself as he walks over to the door, which is not quite shut and not quite opened.  
He’s never done this before, always too afraid of what he might find in the next room, but before he can turn around and crawl back under the covers, cover his ears and pretend he can’t hear a thing, the whip collides with living, bleeding, tortured flesh again and the sound drives all the thoughts from his mind.

Without another second passing, Aidan pushes the door open just enough so he can slip through it, but every effort he might have made to keep quiet is rendered useless as soon as his eyes have settled on the scene in front of him; a choked sob making it past his lips before he can stuff it back down his throat and swallow it, just like he has done with so many before this one.

Richard is kneeling on the floor, with his back bent and his head hung low, facing one of the many crosses which Aidan has learned to ignore. There are bloody smeared across dark red marks, pink ones, pale white ones and his right arm is still half raised, strong fingers clutching a wooden handle so tightly that the knuckles have turned white, and Aidan can pinpoint the moment his lover realises he is not alone anymore.  
From one second to the next, Richard’s entire body tenses up, his heavy breathing stopping altogether, and Aidan wants to say something, but cannot find the words.

“Aidan”, the other finally whispers, and his name sounds like it is nothing but a gust of wind, a breath held inside a little too long, a prayer muttered without noticing, broken and toneless and ashamed. He hates himself for ever making Richard sound that way.  
There still isn’t anything he could say to make this better, so instead he just steps a little closer, touches a hand to Richard’s shoulder. It could be enough, but it isn’t, and although there is blood clinging to his skin, Aidan rushes over, turns, spins around, falls down on his knees so he is facing Richard, even if the other is not looking back at him.

There is sweat beading on his lover’s forehead, tears gathered in the corners of his eyes, and Aidan has never seen him this vulnerable before, this raw, not even when the other kissed him for the first time after what had seemed like an eternity of watching and waiting and dancing around each other. He had pulled back a moment later, both afraid of offending Aidan and his God and he’d been breaking back then, but now, Richard is broken, has been broken for long, and is laid out for everyone to see.  
Without warning, a wave of fierce, hot protectiveness rolls over him, drowns Aidan’s thoughts out until they’re just a soft whisper in his mind. He’s barely even aware that he is talking, repeating over and over again that it will be alright, everything will be alright; a mother soothing a sick child more than a grown man talking to a lover, but still Richard leans into his touch when Aidan rests their foreheads together.

It makes for another few lashes, he is dimly aware of it, but not even that thought is enough to stop Aidan from leaning further in and capturing Richard’s lips in a desperate kiss, which tastes faintly of blood, tastes faintly of tears. There are words spilling from one mouth to another, apologies and promises and vows and a hundred thousand different versions of _I love you_ , but Richard is still shaking when they tear their lips and gazes and words from the other.  
He’s still split so open that Aidan is sure he can see his blood pumping, neurons firing, muscles tensing up and relaxing again, but his eyes are pleading.

For a few moments, which feel long enough that he should be able to see civilisations rise and fall again, stars be born and die, Aidan doesn’t understand what for, but then Richard darts his tongue out, licks over split, swollen lips and whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but… I just…”  
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but he doesn’t need to; the fragments are more than enough to make Aidan understand just what the other is trying to say.

His heart clenches more violently than ever, his breathing stops, because for some selfish reason he expected this to be enough; a few touches to undo a lifetime of guilt and faith and punishment. It’s not and he should have known, for no matter how much he loves, Richard’s God will always have been here before him.  
So he nods, since there is nothing else he could do, even if his mind entertains thoughts of handcuffs and ropes and desperate tears for a spilt second; and Richard relaxes in front of his eyes, as if he had taken one of his lover’s burdens as his own.

Aidan pulls back, sits on his heels with his eyes still fixed on the other’s face, his eyes which shine with love and his lips which speak of kisses, and he knows that he should get up and leave, never mention this again, but he can’t go back to sleep and try to forget that his lover is slumped down on the hard tiles, beating himself until he is shaking and bleeding, until he thinks he has done penance for something he should never have to feel guilty for in the first place.

Instead of getting up, Aidan moves in again, tries not to think too much about how Richard leans into the touch without hesitation, even if he knows what even this will bring him, but instead of stealing another kiss, he brings two hands up to the sides of Richard’s face, makes sure that the other is looking at him when he speaks.  
“Let me.”

It’s just two words, because anything more is impossible, but those two words seem to be enough, because Richard’s eyes go wide, shock written all over his features. He wants to say no, Aidan knows it, because just like he won’t let Richard see him cry, the other doesn’t want Aidan to see him like this, but he brushes every word from his lover’s lips with his own in something which is not quite a kiss but more than a simple touch.  
“Please”, he mutters when they are still close enough that Richard will feel the word just as well as hear it, and the other stays silent, unmoving for a long moment before he nods slowly, as if still caught up in a terrible dream.

There is a small cluttering sound, which momentarily startles Aidan, until he realises that it’s the whip Richard has still been holding until a moment ago colliding with the floor. He lets out a breath he didn’t realise he was holding, stays as close to Richard as he can for another precious moment before he pulls back, gets up. It’s like a trance, the state he is in, the last traces of sleep stuck to Aidan’s thoughts making everything blur together, his steps, the smell of blood, the welts already strewn across Richard’s skin and the scars that have gone into hiding beneath.

The whip looks strangely small and insignificant lying on the floor, just a handle and leather strings fixed together and it feels just as small when Aidan picks it up, would feel too light to do damage if he didn’t know better. Richard doesn’t make a sound, doesn’t even move so Aidan does it for him, walks until he is standing behind him, eyes fixed on the other’s messy hair just so he won’t see what Richard has already done to his back.  
“How many?”, he asks and watches his lover try and curl in on himself, trying to hide from him and God and everything in between. For a moment, Aidan wonders in just how much pain the other has to be, but then Richard swallows and answers. “Seven.”  
And Aidan feels relief wash over him, because he has expected twenty and feared a hundred.

There is a pause, since Aidan needs to say a hundred things and doesn’t want to let even one thing slip past his lips, just in case that it would raise the count to eight, to ten; instead he closes his eyes and raises his arm, which is much easier than he would have expected.  
What is harder than he could ever have thought is bringing it down again.

His nails are digging deep into his palms, so deep that Aidan knows the red of the marks will match the one on Richard’s back, his eyes are screwed shut so hard that it isn’t darkness enveloping him, it’s the night sky, dotted with small, white stars.  
And he can’t bring himself to do it, grips the handle of the whip harder and harder, until his fingers start aching from the strain, and it still doesn’t help, doesn’t change anything, until Richard makes the smallest, most heartbreakingly pleading sound, something which is neither a sigh nor a moan, but something in between.  
And suddenly, it’s easier, Aidan’s arm moving on its own volition, because he has always, always, _always_ done everything to help Richard, to make him feel safe and warm and loved.

Still, the sound the whip makes when it collides with his lover’s back is the worst one Aidan has ever heard, the sickening feeling of something stopping his hand, the pained gasp the sting forces from between Richard’s lips. Tears are spilling from his still closed eyes, but Aidan doesn’t even try to fight them anymore, lets them wet his cheeks and splash on the ground in thick, heavy drops as he tries his best to raise the whip again.

It’s near impossible and the effort almost causes Aidan to miss the command, order, plea mixed into Richard’s heavy breathing. “Harder.”  
For a moment, Aidan just stares, unable to believe what he has heard, then a sob wrecks through his body, making him shake all over, but Aidan doesn’t say a word, just nods, opens his eyes and finds that it doesn’t change a thing, the tears blurring everything together.  
When he brings the whip down the next time, he can hear the whirring sound as it cuts through air, the crack when every single string cuts deep into skin.

“Harder”, Richard says with his voice strained and broken, and Aidan is trembling all over, blind with tears and mute with sobs bleeding into each other and gathering in the back of his throat until he feels as if he was choking.  
He brings the whip down even harder the next time.

 

Aidan deals the last four blows as quickly as possible, half of his tears caused by Richard’s pain, the other by the knowledge that, if he stays here, this won’t be the last time he does this; if he is being selfish or just in love, Aidan doesn’t know, his tortured brain mixing both things together.

And then it’s over, finally over, and Aidan is still crying, breaking down right where he is standing, whip cluttering uselessly to the ground next to him. If he could, he would touch Richard, hold him, soothe him, but he cannot bear the thought of hurting the other even more with a careless brush of lips, a misplaced caress, so he stays where he is, sobbing and shattered in the middle of the floor, so close to Richard and yet too far away.  
In the end, it’s the other who moves, turns around wincing and hissing in pain, not knowing that Aidan couldn’t think himself more useless than right now, when he is asking for even more than Richard has already given.

Arms wrap themselves around him, pull him closer until Aidan can smell blood and feel heated flesh against his cheek.  
“Thank you”, Richard mutters against his neck, voice muffled by dark curls, and for a moment, Aidan wants to pull back and tell the other to never, ever be grateful that he hurt him. He doesn’t, just relaxes into the embrace, into the safety and warmth and love, places a sweet, small kiss on Richard’s shoulder.  
And promises himself that he’ll leave and save his lover from this hell he has put him in.

Tomorrow.

**Author's Note:**

> In case you want to say hi, send me a prompt, or tell me something nice, you can find me on Tumblr here:  
> [X](http://www.coloursflyaway.tumblr.com)


End file.
